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Wednesday, 11 May 2016

Daily Key Triggers - 12/5/2016

As regular readers of my Blog will know, I enjoy conducting casual dream experiments and then recording my progress in a honest and thorough way so that my fellow oneironauts can monitor my methodology, successes and failures. My most recent experiment was a Dream Incubation Experiment - Serial Killer Dream, but despite a few instances where the theme emerged in my dreams, I have not had much luck in incubating the desired dream.

Therefore, although I intend to return to this dream incubation experiment, I decided to try something new in order to practice my skills of influencing the content of my dreams. I thought an inventive way of doing this, would be to use day residue - the events of our waking day (the day(s) prior to the dream) which appear in, or influence, our dreams. This is because, through analysis of each of my recorded dreams, I constantly notice the significance of day residue and how it affects the narrative content, themes and symbolism of my dreams. Hopefully, this experiment will also lead to me being able to identify day residue within the dreamin order to hopefully use it as a 'dreamsign' (and trigger a reality check) which could help induce lucidity.

Methodology

In addition to analysing the day residue which surfaces in my dreams by chance, I am going to try and 'foreshadow' or influence my dreams by identifying 5 key events/experiences which happen during my waking hours (I don't always sleep at night). I will refer to these key events/experiences as 'Key Triggers' (my own term) before I go to sleep.

I will record the 5 Key Triggers in detail, so it is clear how I experienced them and in what context.

I am not going to use any particular cognitive technique with regard to the Key Triggers during my waking hours prior to the dream - I am relying on the fact that I am consciously selecting them in advance and recording them. I am not trying to incubate a particular dream - I am simply experimenting with 'predicting' day residue or analysing whether identifying potential sources of day residue in advance can affect the dreams I spontaneously have the following night. This experiment is not about control, simply influence.

I will hopefully recognise any of the Key Triggers which appear in my dream whilst I am dreaming. I hope that this might work as a dreamsign, leading to a reality check and a lucid dream by way of a DILD (Dream-Initiated Lucid Dream).

I will then record the dream as usual and then analyse my results.

KEY TRIGGERS

My Key Triggers for Thursday 12 May 2016

(1) Great Yarmouth, NorfolkGreat Yarmouth is one of my favourite places. I love the trashy, decaying, cheap-and-cheerful aesthetic of British seaside resort towns, with the mix of Victorian architecture and bright lights of amusement arcades and tourist attractions. I hope to one day live in Yarmouth. I visited Yarmouth last week and took some photographs, which I have included below, alongside some that I sourced from the internet. I am using Yarmouth as a Daily Key Trigger - many of my previous dreams have been located in Yarmouth, so I thought this might be an ideal 'key trigger' location for my dreams.